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Only a small part of the software in use here was written by Rebble. They cloned the Pebble app store originally, but the store has no value by itself. What mak

by modeless 11mo ago

Only a small part of the software in use here was written by Rebble. They cloned the Pebble app store originally, but the store has no value by itself. What makes it valuable is the catalog of watchfaces and apps, approximately none of which were built by Rebble. They were originally scraped by Rebble from Pebble, which makes the accusation of scraping here ironic. The software on the watch itself is mostly Pebble software with mostly Core Devices modifications. The phone app was written mostly by Core Devices. By Rebble's own admission using Rebble code only saved Core Devices "a month or two of engineering effort". And the "more restrictive license" they're accused of adding is AGPL, still aggressively open source. It's also strange to me that the Bluetooth commit they point to before claiming "Rebble paid for the work" was actually written by Liam McLoughlin, a Google and former Fitbit and Pebble engineer. Was Rebble paying a Google engineer?

deleted 11mo ago
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shkkmo 11mo ago
> They were originally scraped by Rebble from Pebble, which makes the accusation of scraping here ironic. Scraping data because the original publisher is going under to prevent the data from being lost is very different from scraping data from someone who you are actively trying negotiate with over use of that data. > It's also strange to me that the Bluetooth commit they point to before claiming "Rebble paid for the work" was actually written by Liam McLoughlin, a Google and former Fitbit engineer. Was Rebble paying a Google engineer? The claim was that Rebble paid the developers of NimBLE, Codecoup, to assist with integration of NimBLE into RebbleOS
- modeless 11mo ago
  > The claim was that Rebble paid the developers of NimBLE, Codecoup, to assist with integration of NimBLE into RebbleOS OK, that claim wasn't actually made in this post. I see in a blog post last month they say "We engaged the services of Codecoup – the maintainers of NimBLE – to help us find a handful of bugs in our implementation of Bluetooth on legacy watches". Core Devices isn't selling legacy watches though, and they've been working on Bluetooth since long before last month. So it's still not clear to me what Bluetooth work Rebble is claiming to have paid for that Core Devices is actually relying on. Also, in that same post they say "we’ve made it work by agreeing that Core will pay us a reasonable amount to cover our costs and to support the maintenance of Rebble Web Services". So Core is actually supposed to be paying Rebble, they're not just using the store for free. No mention of that in this post...
- themafia 11mo ago
  It's like the maritime laws concerning salvage. Rebble rightfully salvaged a sunk ship. If the ship never sank then Rebble never would have taken possession of it.
shkkmo 11mo ago
> By Rebble's own admission using Rebble code only saved Core Devices "a month or two of engineering effort". And the "more restrictive license" they're accused of adding is AGPL, still aggressively open source. The "a month or two" was specifically about the mobile app, not the firmware, dev portal or store data. To me it seems pretty obvious that Core Devices has benefited and enourmous amount from Rebble's work. The fact that Core Devices seems uninterested in contributing back tells me all I need to know about their ethics.
- modeless 11mo ago
  Rebble didn't write the firmware, just as they didn't write the apps and watchfaces that they scraped from Pebble for their store. Their main contributions were writing a web app to clone the Pebble store and maintaining it for many years, which we are all grateful for. But that doesn't give them ownership of the apps and watchfaces that give the store its value, nor the firmware that was open sourced by Google, which wouldn't have happened without Eric.
  - shkkmo 11mo ago
    > nor the firmware that was open sourced by Google, which wouldn't have happened without Eric. Yet Eric didn't fork Google's codebase, they forked Rebble's codebase. > Rebble didn't write the firmware, just as they didn't write the apps and watchfaces They did work on both. You seem pretty dismissive and one sided here. > which wouldn't have happened without Eric. Source? The official google announcement claims that the code was open sourced "to help and support the volunteers who have come together to maintain functionality for Pebble watches after the original company ceased operations in 2016"... which combined with an explicit callout to Rebble later, is a pretty darn clear statement that the code was released because of Rebble, not because of Eric. Edit: So on one side we gave a community organization that us the only reason such a strong community still exists that has spent longer taking care of the Pebble community that Pebble the company existed. On the otherside we have an individual who has already sold out the community once, who is trying to start another company by extracting the sweat equity of the organization that rescued his community from his choices. While doing this, he can't even be bothered to give credit to that organization for the massive opensource headstart they gave his mobile app or other efforts. Instead HE tries to take full credit for opensourcing his derivative work. Edit: So while I agree that the Pebble community needs a for profit hardware partner, I no longer believe that parter can be Core Devices or led by Eric due to a lack of trust and ethics.
DarkGauss 11mo ago
The android app had stopped working for me a couple of months before the new Pebble came out, so my Old Pebble Time was at EOL, and unusable. The new Pebble app by Core devices made it work again. Rebble didn't do that. They were effective only keeping the old devices on life support. Don't get me wrong, it's awesome that Rebble came along and extended the life of our Pebbles. I'm siding slightly more with Eric and Co. than with Rebble.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

shkkmo 11mo ago

> They were originally scraped by Rebble from Pebble, which makes the accusation of scraping here ironic. Scraping data because the original publisher is going under to prevent the data from being lost is very different from scraping data from someone who you are actively trying negotiate with over use of that data. > It's also strange to me that the Bluetooth commit they point to before claiming "Rebble paid for the work" was actually written by Liam McLoughlin, a Google and former Fitbit engineer. Was Rebble paying a Google engineer? The claim was that Rebble paid the developers of NimBLE, Codecoup, to assist with integration of NimBLE into RebbleOS

modeless 11mo ago
> The claim was that Rebble paid the developers of NimBLE, Codecoup, to assist with integration of NimBLE into RebbleOS OK, that claim wasn't actually made in this post. I see in a blog post last month they say "We engaged the services of Codecoup – the maintainers of NimBLE – to help us find a handful of bugs in our implementation of Bluetooth on legacy watches". Core Devices isn't selling legacy watches though, and they've been working on Bluetooth since long before last month. So it's still not clear to me what Bluetooth work Rebble is claiming to have paid for that Core Devices is actually relying on. Also, in that same post they say "we’ve made it work by agreeing that Core will pay us a reasonable amount to cover our costs and to support the maintenance of Rebble Web Services". So Core is actually supposed to be paying Rebble, they're not just using the store for free. No mention of that in this post...
themafia 11mo ago
It's like the maritime laws concerning salvage. Rebble rightfully salvaged a sunk ship. If the ship never sank then Rebble never would have taken possession of it.

shkkmo 11mo ago

> By Rebble's own admission using Rebble code only saved Core Devices "a month or two of engineering effort". And the "more restrictive license" they're accused of adding is AGPL, still aggressively open source. The "a month or two" was specifically about the mobile app, not the firmware, dev portal or store data. To me it seems pretty obvious that Core Devices has benefited and enourmous amount from Rebble's work. The fact that Core Devices seems uninterested in contributing back tells me all I need to know about their ethics.

modeless 11mo ago
Rebble didn't write the firmware, just as they didn't write the apps and watchfaces that they scraped from Pebble for their store. Their main contributions were writing a web app to clone the Pebble store and maintaining it for many years, which we are all grateful for. But that doesn't give them ownership of the apps and watchfaces that give the store its value, nor the firmware that was open sourced by Google, which wouldn't have happened without Eric.
- shkkmo 11mo ago
  > nor the firmware that was open sourced by Google, which wouldn't have happened without Eric. Yet Eric didn't fork Google's codebase, they forked Rebble's codebase. > Rebble didn't write the firmware, just as they didn't write the apps and watchfaces They did work on both. You seem pretty dismissive and one sided here. > which wouldn't have happened without Eric. Source? The official google announcement claims that the code was open sourced "to help and support the volunteers who have come together to maintain functionality for Pebble watches after the original company ceased operations in 2016"... which combined with an explicit callout to Rebble later, is a pretty darn clear statement that the code was released because of Rebble, not because of Eric. Edit: So on one side we gave a community organization that us the only reason such a strong community still exists that has spent longer taking care of the Pebble community that Pebble the company existed. On the otherside we have an individual who has already sold out the community once, who is trying to start another company by extracting the sweat equity of the organization that rescued his community from his choices. While doing this, he can't even be bothered to give credit to that organization for the massive opensource headstart they gave his mobile app or other efforts. Instead HE tries to take full credit for opensourcing his derivative work. Edit: So while I agree that the Pebble community needs a for profit hardware partner, I no longer believe that parter can be Core Devices or led by Eric due to a lack of trust and ethics.

DarkGauss 11mo ago

The android app had stopped working for me a couple of months before the new Pebble came out, so my Old Pebble Time was at EOL, and unusable. The new Pebble app by Core devices made it work again. Rebble didn't do that. They were effective only keeping the old devices on life support. Don't get me wrong, it's awesome that Rebble came along and extended the life of our Pebbles. I'm siding slightly more with Eric and Co. than with Rebble.